Freedom and Love
by tamarindblue
Summary: "You taste like freedom" he whispers against her lips. He is Neji and She is Tenten and even as fragments, they are more than enough for each other. Prequel/companion piece to the one year affair


**Freedom and Love**

She didn't know how they ended up in such awkward position, with her facing him directly, her eyes darting between his eyes so intent, shining like a well glazed mirror against the fading twilight and his lips sealed in an impassive unreadable line.

And just as she wills herself to turn away from him, as her eyes break contact and linger on the glossy grass, he leans in to kiss her, it is slow yet brief, it is supposedly chaste yet it straddles the line between satiety & hunger and it tastes almost bittersweet.

"You taste like freedom" he then whispers against her lips.

"You taste like love" she wants to counter

It has taken so long ...

* * *

It has taken too long between

him and his uncle with the later's advice to just 'slow down' , 'be patient' and 'Take heed' and his not so secret wish to just postpone everything, to go back on everything and just bail out on Tenten .. She was just 'politically unsound' for them , the mighty Hyuugas and a war was coming soon.

"Let's get married now"

He simply suggests, as if he is asking for something so natural, so simple as a walk in the park.

"Yes, let's do"

She agrees because if Neji has decided to give up his always the sensible, ever the sane attitude, if he has decided to go crazy one mile , to be impulsive for a change .. She would match him one on one, mile for mile and step for step...

* * *

They move in to the Hyuuga compound,

The infamous council is reticent , hard to please and uptight and she finds them suffocating at points .. She bears, he urges her to ,until one day it takes an absurd turn and one member verbally assaults her

His eyes flash a dangerous hue of white

"Nobody, Not even the hokage himself, dares insult my wife in my presence or otherwise ... I will make sure he doesn't live to regret it" he proclaimed as he gentlefisted him.

* * *

The main house,

Everyone is at her beck & call, fulfilling her slightest of whims and she hates it ... The mainhouse because Hinata is there, her best friend and surrogate sister whom she couldn't help but feel slightly jealous of, with the strange bond she shares with Neji ...

"Do you love her?" she asks after her tolerance reaches full brim and she can take it no more

He smiles such a calm resigned smile, a waterwashed smile one would give as he reminsces about a memory, a distant fond memory

"I love you, I only ever want to be with you"

Later, she would learn that he start ed preparations for them to move out.

* * *

It is unadulterated bliss when they know she is pregnant ..

An unprecedented tide of joy that didn't land along the desolate shores of the mainhouse since Hizashi had died.

They bicker about names , the most trivial and stupid of names, and they are divided whether to call the baby Komatori, like the robin soaring in the sky or Hikari , the shining light

"You should call him Tama" Hinata coyly suggests

he was enthralled by the name and indeed

she likes the name, both of them do ...Tama, the jewel, the whole perfect jewel, a boy after their own hearts ...

* * *

It is her whom he resides to everynight .. It is her whom he loves because she is Tenten, the breath of freedom fate has bestowed upon him, a one of a kind .. She is Tenten whom he chooses to love and spend his life with.

And to her, he is Neji , he is shelter, security and love who is almost ethereal with his quiet but powerful warmth, he is Neji whose loyalty, care & attentiveness can shelter and hold an entire universe , he is Neji with his gentle embrace that can quell away all her worries, all her insecurities , all her fears and the tiny small voice that whispers among them that this is too good to be true, that this happiness is short lived and that something is bound to happen.

He is love and she is freedom and they are ever intertwined,

He is Neji and She is Tenten and even as fragments they are more than enough for each other.


End file.
